If you're using Chris Lacy's Action Launcher, there's a pretty sizable updating waiting for. Version 1.20 brings a helpful search feature right there in the Action Bar. It's able to search through your contacts, apps and even music, giving the results there there on the home screen. Action Launcher's unique "Covers" -- think folders with more functionality -- have gotten even better and now serve as app shortcuts as well as a folder with more options inside. There also are options to hide apps from the app list, some visual changes, and you can import home screens from other third-party launchers.

We've got the entire changelog after the break (Lacy jokes that it's too long to fit on a single Nexus 7 screen, which is saying something), and some demo video is ready to go there as well. The update should be live in Google Play any time now.

Action Launcher 1.2.0 changelog:

NEW: Quicksearch - filter the apps, contacts and even music on your device, directly from the action bar's search button.

NEW: Covers can now be opened by swiping vertically on the cover icon, double-tapping the icon, or both. A swipe is the default.

Reader comments

I took the plunge today and decided to pick this up. I always like to see a developer try and put a new spin on something like this.

UPDATE: BEWARE if you use Lux:

Well... I was enjoying it, despite an annoying bug that was causing the launcher to crash and restart sometimes while trying to add widgets. Then, I let the screen turn off. I use an app called Lux that allows me to very precisely control the screen's auto-brightness. I went to unlock the phone and as soon as Lux tried to set the auto-brightness, the whole phone wigged out. Lux kept crashing and restarting, and the brightness somehow got locked to 50%. I actually had to clear the default launcher, set it back to Nova (which took some patience with the phone in the state it was in) and reboot the phone to get it to stop. I'm back on Nova for now, but I will keep my copy of Action Launcher and email to dev to see if he has any ideas.

All that said, it's a good launcher with a *ton* of potential. The design was really cool, and even after only half an hour I am *seriously* going to miss the "Cover" feature.

Agreed, I bought into the hype when i saw it the first time. It was nice to see a change of home replacements but now i'm back on apex launcher.
The fact that an update came out today got me excited, but as soon as i updated, it wasn't much of a change. Pretty disappointed.

Ditto. I'm not sure where people came up with the *expectation* that mobile apps should be updated weekly. As a software developer for a living, I can promise you that *most* of the time, you're not going to be able to add anything significant to the code in less than 2 months by the time to factor in testing and bug fixes. It's a lot different when it's just one guy versus a whole team. Software development isn't magic, and complex code can take some serious time.

Sorry, but I think that's pretty stupid. Tweetlanes was a twitter app, and Twitter is sort of cutting off developers. I would have stopped if I was him. I think we're still lucky to have Falcon Pro in development.

Nah, Lacy seems to be responding very very well to feedback, clearly he worked hard to get this update out the door, and it brings a lot of welcome changes. Just as I was getting used to the leftmost home screen being home, he goes and switches it back to middle though! Otherwise, I love the customizability, people might complain about gestures, but I think they're sorta useless and detract from the pure Android feel. I think he's stuck pretty close to stock android with this update, and the launcher is blazing fast on Nexus 4

I'll say this in the limited contact that I have had with Chris online.

He responds very well in regards to issues that popup during RC testing. Questions and concerns brought to him regarding testing this release were responded to fairly quickly in my opinion. He is in Australia after all, so the time difference can be an issue.

It has been discussed many times that Tweetlanes development was halted because of the token ceiling. Seeing as it was a free app, it is tough to really complain when the developer is not likely to see much in the way of a reward for the time spent on an app knowing that the future for it is already limited.

Thankfully there are no token limits for a launcher, and while I fully agree that this is expensive, I think it is headed in the right direction.